Contributor Robert Pizzo Featured on Pomegranate

If you remember, we recently shared with you Robert Pizzo’s unique illustrated children’s book The Amazing Animal Alphabet of Twenty-Six Tongue Twisters. It seems he’s been attracting the attention of  folks int he illustration and arts world: he was recently interviewed on Pomegranate.com, the publisher of his book.

Here are some highlights from the interview.

Think Like an Illustrator, not a Author

Pizzo says he has a unique approach to his book because he doesn’t consider himself an author. As an illustrator, he approached the book from a different angle:

“I’m a well-established illustrator, with a bold and vibrant style that happens to appeal to kids, too. The book isn’t at all linear like a traditional story. It’s more like a crazy random-access list in the mode of Dr. Seuss books like One Fish, Two Fish. Seuss began as an illustrator, too. If it was good enough for him….” [Read more…]

Visual Marketing Contributor Tries His Hand at a Children’s Book

One of our book contributors, Robert Pizzo, whose unique email marketing designs were featured in the book, recently announced that his first children’s book, The Amazing Animal Alphabet of Twenty-Six Tongue Twisters will be published September of 2013.

The book features a silly tongue twister for each letter of the alphabet, accompanied by Pizzo’s iconic art:

 

When asked where his inspiration came from, Pizzo said it was close to home:

“As the father of three daughters, I had always enjoyed reading to my kids. We ended up acquiring quite a collection of books and I guess it’s in the genes that my girls always enjoyed the ones that had more of a graphically designed look to them. A few years ago I had this idea for an animal alphabet book loosely based on a little sentence game I would play with my kids while riding in the car. Though I had illustrated many book covers I had always wanted to see what it was like to illustrate an entire book.”
Pizzo says creating a book wasn’t that much different than his average illustration assignment, “only much, MUCH longer!”
He looked to authors like Dr. Seuss, who have mastered the simplicity of words in children’s books, and put more focus on the illustrations. “First, I took a jumble of seemingly random words beginning with the same letter and turned them into a complete sentence. The more unlikely and absurd the better! Once I had that I thought,  ‘OK, now, how can I illustrate that?’ You ought to see the gigantic stack of sketches and Post-It doodles this process generated.”
Pizzo says he would consider writing more children’s books in the future, depending on how well this one does.  “I have a couple of other book dummies and ideas in a folder on my computer, so who knows?”

Improving Upon a Successful Marketing Campaign

If you recall, we introduced you to Expert Laser Services last year, as well as its Destroy Your Printer contest. For the past four years, the image solutions provider has invited frustrated office workers to submit videos of them demolishing their printers. A winner was chosen based on votes.

While the brand has decided not to continue the contest, the brand wanted to play off of the success of the contest. So Nathan Dube, Chief SMM Engineer and MPS Consultant for Expert Laser Services, came up with the idea to create a digital comic around the idea of destroying printers.

“I use the videos from the contest as an “icebreaker” when meeting with prospects for the first time in my sales endeavors. I find that many of the IT managers I meet with really enjoy the videos and they always make for an outburst of laughter and disbelief which sort of diffuses the staunch nature of such business meetings and allows for the vibration of the prospect to be become more positive and relaxed, thus causing them to be more open and receptive to what I have to offer them.”

The brand took an already-successful marketing campaign (the contest) and added on to it. It also helps brand Nathan, who now is a face, not just a name. See the entire comic here.